


As The Light Disperses

by blanketed_in_stars



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Darkness, F/F, Graphic Description
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-01
Updated: 2016-06-01
Packaged: 2018-07-11 16:20:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7060126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blanketed_in_stars/pseuds/blanketed_in_stars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The little house saw them at dusk and dawn and all the dark moments in between.</p>
            </blockquote>





	As The Light Disperses

**Author's Note:**

  * For [montparnasse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/montparnasse/gifts).



> Originally posted in [the HP femmefest](http://femmefest.livejournal.com/100531.html) on LJ.
> 
> The title and epigraph are from Limits by Jorge Luis Borges, translated by R. G. Barnes and Robert Mezey.

_I believe I hear in dawn the strenuously_  
Long murmur of a multitude departing.  
They are what has loved me and forgotten.  
Space, time, and Borges are deserting me. 

 

———

 

It’s the first afternoon of the year that it’s really warm, and Dorcas reaches up and back to find Marlene’s hand. The sun’s going down, though it hasn’t yet been beaten by the chill, and Marlene ignores her hand and hugs her around the shoulders as if to keep her warm.

Across the room, Black watches them from his perch on the windowsill. “So, what do you think?” he says, covering up an obvious glance at Lupin, who has his back to them all as he makes tea. “Has Rita Skeeter got it right?”

“About what?” Dorcas asks. She tries to catch his eye, but he’s studiously avoiding her gaze.

Black nods at the newspaper hanging half-off the edge of the sofa. It’s open, exposing an article about a masked rally in Glasgow. “She seems to think all Slytherins are clamoring to join this movement what’s-his-face is starting. Is she on to something?”

If she hadn’t spent three years with his cousin Andromeda, Dorcas would be offended—but she knows it’s just his way of hiding something, asking the most awful question that comes to mind. So she looks right at him and says, “You tell me.”

“Don’t do anything stupid,” Lupin says, and turns around a moment later. He, too, is looking at Sirius. “I mean it,” he says. “Last time we had to leave because you couldn’t handle an argument you started.” He grins as he says it, and Black’s cheeks turn pink.

Marlene sighs, and Dorcas can hear from her breath that she’s smiling. “You never know,” she says, “maybe it’s us Hufflepuffs you have to watch out for. All that loyalty and hard work really lends itself to bigotry and Muggle-hunting.”

Dorcas snorts and turns around to kiss her, tasting the warmth of the sunset on her lips. “Tell me if you feel it coming on, won’t you?”

“Oh, you’ll know.” Marlene chuckles. She pulls back and looks at the other two, both taking it in turns to steal glances, then looking away before the other can see. She raises one eyebrow at Dorcas.

Dorcas shakes her head. They’ll figure themselves out eventually. “Load of rubbish,” she says, “I’m not ruining my evening with it.” She gives Marlene’s hand a squeeze and gets to her feet. “Who’s hungry?” She glances at the newspaper, rolls it up, and drops it in the bin.

 

———

 

It’s getting late. The windows are mostly dark now and the warm air smells like dusk. Across the room, Marlene waves her wand and the candle at her elbow flickers into flame. The yellow light curves the angles of her face and makes her hair shine in a faint way, as if she’s barely even there. She bends closer to her book with her lips pressed together in concentration, eyes glued to the page.

“What is it?” Dorcas asks. She gets up before Marlene answers, because after three years she knows the little things about Marlene, like how she chews her pencils and sets all the clocks ten minutes fast and only drinks hot chocolate in the summer, and the twist of her face says that something is wrong.

Marlene looks up and smiles, a second too late and a mile off. “What’s what?”

Dorcas sinks into the sofa next to her and pulls Marlene around so her legs are in Dorcas’s lap. “You tell me.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Marlene says. “What are you—no! No,” she gasps, kicking her ticklish feet out of reach. “Don’t even think about it.”

Snickering, Dorcas leans into her side, wraps her arms around her wide waist. “If you don’t tell me what’s bothering you right now, I’m going to eat that ice cream you’ve been saving.” There’s no reaction. “Every last bit.”

Marlene sighs. “It’s Dumbledore,” she says, shifting to put her arm across Dorcas’s shoulders so they’re locked tightly together. “He’s getting people moving. Wants us to fight.”

For a moment, Dorcas doesn’t quite comprehend. “What, like—like a war?” Marlene nods. “Is it going to come to that?”

When Marlene shrugs, they tip sideways a few inches. “It might.”

It shouldn’t seem right, or possible, but like the stars beginning to dot the sky outside, it’s undeniable. There’s a shadow to every small brightness these days. “Who put Dumbledore in charge?” she asks.

“Dumbledore,” Marlene replies wryly. “Better him than nobody, right?”

Dorcas makes a noncommittal noise. “What’s that you’re reading, then?” She reaches for the book which now lies open on the floor, dislodged when Dorcas first sat down. It’s an unfamiliar volume, not one of theirs. _Protective Spells for Home and Hearth._ “Marlene,” Dorcas says, a tightness gathering in the pit of her stomach, “what are you afraid of?”

Marlene smooths a kiss into her hair. When she pulls back, her face is soft with the candlelight and care. The tightness grows, clenches. “Losing you,” she murmurs. “It’s getting dangerous out there.”

It is. Dorcas knows it is. But she reaches up to kiss Marlene, slowly, tenderly, with warmth. “We’re safe,” she says. “I love you.” Like it’s a shield and it’s keeping the twilight at bay. Maybe it is. She closes her eyes and holds Marlene tighter in the growing dark.

 

———

 

“There was someone following me,” Marlene gasps, leaning against the door. “I think I lost them, but—”

“Following you?” Dorcas repeats. She pulls Marlene away from the door and peers out of the little side window. The small yard is empty; the shadowy walk is deserted as well, the only movement the fluttering crisp leaves at the edge of the grass, barely visible in the light of the moon that’s just beginning to rise. She turns back. “What do you mean?”

Marlene hugs herself as if she can still feel the chill of the night. “I mean after the meeting, I was walking to the end of the street to Apparate and someone grabbed me from a doorway—I had to switch at the last second, wound up outside the Leaky Cauldron, and I ran a few blocks before I tried again, but—”

“Who was it?”

“I don’t know,” Marlene says, “they had a mask on, I d-didn’t see—”

She’s shaking hard, not so much leaning on the wall as collapsing against it. Dorcas steps forward and draws her into her arms, folding Marlene into her own body and holding her close. “You’re home now,” she murmurs. “Don’t be scared.”

Marlene’s hands fist in her shirt. All at once she’s crying with her face buried in Dorcas’s chest. Her tears soak the fabric and her tiny, whimpering breaths are the only sound in the house. “I can’t help it,” she says. “Dorcas, I can’t, I’m—oh, god—”

“Shhh.” Dorcas rubs her back and tightens her grip, something breaking and burning behind her ribs. She says words that don’t make sense even to her, and she doesn’t hear them, only knows that she has to keep talking, because if she stops then Marlene will hurt more.

Slowly Dorcas begins walking down the hall away from the door, keeping both arms wrapped around Marlene. She brings her into the kitchen and sits her at the table, but as she’s rummaging in the cupboard for the tea she feels hands creep around her waist. “Chamomile, please,” Marlene says from behind in the barest thread of a voice.

They don’t let go of each other until they both have steaming mugs in front of them with generous amounts of honey mixed in, and even then Dorcas keeps their fingers twined. She itches to barrel out the door, wand in hand, the same way she itches for something stronger than tea, but the tears on Marlene’s face keep her tethered to the table where darkness flickers at the edges of the lamplight.

After some indeterminate stretch of heartbeats—Dorcas doesn’t know, Dorcas doesn’t care—Marlene sighs shakily and wipes her face with damp sleeves. “I,” she begins. “I didn’t mean to—” She shakes her head, mute.

Dorcas grits her teeth through the rending of her heart and asks, “Did they hurt you?”

“No,” Marlene replies, right away, too quickly to be a lie. She tries a smile, but the corners of her mouth turn down instead and she presses the back of her free hand against her eyes. “I’m fine,” she insists, taking a slow breath, bringing their joined hands to her mouth and kissing Dorcas’s knuckles. Her breath ghosts over the skin. “I just—what if I led someone back here, Dorcas, what if I led them straight to you?”

Dorcas shakes her head. “None of the wards went off,” she points out. “We’re alone.” And she feels it, with the shadows pressing at her spine.

The hollows of Marlene’s face look deeper, skull-like, in the dim light. “I couldn’t stop imagining it,” she says, “ever since I came in the door.”

“Don’t be scared,” Dorcas says again, paltry, stupid, senseless words. They’re all she has. The sadness in Marlene’s face says that she understands. It’s her expression that makes up Dorcas’s mind. “I’m going to start coming to the meetings,” she says.

Marlene’s brow creases. “You said you didn’t think there’d be a war.”

“There won’t be,” Dorcas assures her. “But if anyone follows you after, I’ll kill ‘em.”

The laugh that bursts unbidden from Marlene’s mouth is starlight between clouds, bright and clear. Dorcas wants to bottle it up or sew the sound of it into her skin, use it to warm herself through the coming nights.

 

———

 

Dorcas yawns so wide she feels as if her jaw is going to fall off. Marlene, of course, sees. “Time for bed?” she asks.

Dorcas shakes her head.

“You know you’ll wish you’d slept tomorrow,” Marlene says.

“Please, Mum, five more minutes,” Dorcas mocks, crawling across the carpet on her stomach to the foot of the chair where Marlene’s curled herself into a ball. She’s tired enough that it’s like lugging weights along with each of her bones. “Come join me,” she says, smiling upwards.

Marlene snorts. “I don’t think so.” But she shifts when she says it, and one foot hangs down.

It’s as good as a yes. Dorcas wraps one hand around Marlene’s ankle and pulls so that she slides half out of the chair. “Stop reading,” she says. “You’ve been at it all day.”

“That’s because I finally have time to myself,” Marlene sighs, letting herself be yanked the rest of the way onto the floor.

Dorcas rolls her eyes. “Of course you do,” she says, “because it’s _Christmas.”_ She lets go of Marlene’s ankle and tugs her down so they’re laying side by side. The lights on the tree make a colorful pattern on the ceiling, almost like a church.

The huff of Marlene’s breath stirs Dorcas’s hair. “Why are we on the floor?”

“Tired,” Dorcas replies.

“That’s what beds are for.”

Dorcas shakes her head. She doesn’t like the bed. It’s where she tosses and turns and waits for bad news. Where she lies all night with her eyes closed but her mind spinning, full of a nameless fear. Where she wakes to further dread. She doesn’t say it out loud, though, conscious of the Muggle radio playing soft carols in the background. “To hell with the bed,” she mumbles.

A chuckle like slow-sweet honey sounds in her ear. “To hell with it,” Marlene agrees, her smile plain in her voice. “We’ll sleep here tonight.”

“Mm.” Dorcas rolls over to kiss her and winds up with a handful of her hair, the other on her jaw. She tastes like cider and it warms Dorcas up, down to the tips of her toes. Their mouths move together with all the languid surety of the moon’s path across the sky, inexorable.

The kiss doesn’t take away the exhaustion, and Dorcas breaks away to yawn again. “So-o-orry,” she says with her mouth still wide open.

Marlene runs her fingers through Dorcas’s hair, their noses touching. “Damn it,” she says, and yawns as well. “It’s catching.”

It’s a pity, Dorcas thinks, that they can’t sleep here every night. The floor is surprisingly comfortable, especially with her head now pillowed on Marlene’s arm. Dorcas fits so well into the parenthesis of her body that she feels turned to stone, unable to move, laden down with the weight of the hour and her love.

Marlene shifts and presses closer to her back. “Happy Christmas,” she murmurs, and sighs.

 

———

 

Blood stains the bright yellow of the bathroom mat, and Dorcas focuses on the sharp contrast of colors—stares and stares at it. “Marlene,” she says, swaying with a sudden dizziness. She reaches out and clutches the towel rack. Louder. She has to be louder. “Marlene!”

Footsteps in the hall. Marlene stands in the doorway in her underwear and takes in the scene for less than five seconds before she hurries forward, sitting Dorcas down on the closed toilet lid. “Why didn’t you say something?” she demands, kneeling for a closer look at the wound in her side. “Doesn’t it hurt?”

“It does now,” Dorcas says. “Must’ve been—”

“Merlin’s beard,” Marlene breathes, “I can’t imagine how you didn’t feel this.”

“It must’ve been Lestrange,” Dorcas continues. “She was probably hoping I’d make it worse before I noticed. How bad is it?”

Marlene doesn’t respond immediately. Dorcas can feel her fingers at the edge of the wound, gentle, cool, barely even there. “It’s hard to tell,” she says at last. “It doesn’t look too awful.”

Dorcas laughs and chokes on a spike of pain. “Not too awful,” she repeats. “What a relief.”

“How much does it hurt?” Marlene asks. “Here, I mean.” She pokes tentatively.

“Ow!” Dorcas gasps, suddenly breathless. She blinks to clear the white spots from her vision. “What are you doing, pulling out ribs?”

“Buck up,” Marlene orders, “don’t be such a wimp.” But beneath the forced light tone, there’s an undercurrent of real fear. Dorcas hears it and feels her skin prickle. “Can you raise your arm over your head?” Marlene asks.

Dorcas tries and clenches her fists so hard her knuckles turn white. “No,” she rasps. “Can you just—damn it—just fix it so we can get on with things?”

"I'm trying," Marlene snaps. “Hold _still.”_

"I _am!”_

"Not still enough!" Marlene's voice is louder now, almost a shout. "I'm shit at healing spells, Dorcas, so you'd better just stop yelling and let me concentrate!”

Dorcas pushes Marlene away and stands up, gritting her teeth against the flash of pain. “I’ll do it myself,” she retorts. She stalks over to the mirror, or tries to; it ends up a half-stagger that forces her to grip the counter. Past her reflection, she can see Marlene, still kneeling, not looking at her. Dorcas forces herself to examine the cut—it really doesn’t look as bad as it feels, now that it’s sinking in. But how it feels is, well, fairly awful.

If she’s honest with herself, she’s worse at healing spells than Dorcas is. She tries to think of an incantation. Anything, so she’s not stuck staring at herself, eyes wide, skin pale, blood red—and Marlene in the background, still facing away.

“For someone who was trying to help, you’ve done a really shoddy job,” Dorcas tells her. She doesn’t know why. It makes her throat burn like firewhiskey.

Marlene stays still. She doesn’t turn.

Dorcas feels something rioting inside her—something loud, something wild. “I’m bleeding out here,” she snarls, “and you’re, what, counting dust specks? I’m about to do irreparable damage to my own flesh and you—you won’t even _look_ at me!” She snatches her wand from the counter and points it at the wound. Takes a breath.

Marlene slams into her and wrests the wand away. The momentum knocks Dorcas against the wall and she lets out a noise that sounds like a kicked dog. Marlene is looking at her now, her face screwed up in a way Dorcas almost doesn’t recognize. “You idiot,” she says, harsh and fast, “you _bloody_ idiot, what are you doing?”

_I don’t know,_ Dorcas thinks, and breathes the air between them. It tastes the way the pain feels.

 

———

 

“Where were you?” Marlene asks, her eyes a faint glimmer in the darkness.

Dorcas drops her coat on the floor and pulls off her shirt. Rainwater from her hair trickles in icy fingers over her shoulders, down her back. She shivers and climbs into the bed without bothering to remove her trousers or find anything warm to wear—Marlene is warm enough beneath the covers. “Got a call from Moody,” she says. “Emergency.”

Marlene hisses when Dorcas presses against her. “Merlin, you’re freezing,” she says, but pulls her in, hands traveling swiftly across gooseflesh skin. Dorcas knows it’s only partly to help her get warm—she has to check for injuries, anything out of the ordinary, anything not quite all right. “What was it?” Marlene murmurs. Her fingers travel slowly down Dorcas’s ribs, counting.

It feels like an anchor. Dorcas swallows and arranges the syllables in her mouth, knowing they’ll come out hard and foul-tasting. “Benjy Fenwick’s dead.”

The fingers stop, but Marlene doesn’t gasp. She, too, swallows. It’s loud. “How?”

That’s what it’s doing to them, what it’s done, this war. Not _oh my god_ or _I can’t believe it_ or even _that’s awful_ —just _how?_ Dorcas scrapes her hair off of the sticky-damp, drying skin of her forehead. “We don’t know for sure. By the time we got there, he was—dead.”

She can still see the overturned chair, the dark streaks on the upholstery. The gouges in the walls from spells that had clearly done their job. A shudder yanks on her spine and Marlene pulls her close; Dorcas lets her. “I found his fingernail,” she whispers into the space between Marlene’s neck and shoulder. “It was stuck in the floorboards.”

“His fingernail?” Marlene repeats. She combs slowly through Dorcas’s tangled hair, working out the knots with her fingers.

Dorcas nods. “Black found his elbow. In the garden.”

Marlene makes a noise that could be a gasp or a gag. “Did they—rip him apart?”

“Blasting charm.” Their arms tighten around each other at the same time, as if that has ever helped, as if it’s ever protected either of them from anything. “Moody thought the elbow must’ve been an accident while they were cleaning up.” Dorcas keeps her voice flat. It makes it easier somehow. “There was a—”

“Stop,” Marlene says, desperately, a tremor in her voice. “Don’t.”

Dorcas pushes the words and bile down obediently, though she, too, is desperate—the empty echoes of Benjy’s flat keep clawing at the edges of her mind and it almost feels like she still has his blood on her body. “Sorry,” she breathes.

Lips press to her temple. “It’s okay.” It isn’t. “It’s okay, it’s all right.” When Dorcas inhales, she shakes, and Marlene holds her until she’s still.

 

———

 

As the last of the stars wink out one by one, Dorcas lets herself in. She's still not used to the empty way the click of the lock echoes through the house— _too big,_ it whispers. But even that doesn't hurt anymore.

It's funny, she thinks, taking off her shoes, or it would be if she remembered what it was to laugh. The last weeks have been a haze of pain, and now there's nothing. She makes sure to put her mud-splattered shoes on the mat.

She goes to the kitchen. Her tea from two nights ago sits cold in its mug. When she dumps it in the sink, there's a dark ring left behind, and she washes it away by hand. It takes five minutes. Each scrub is methodical, sure, as robotic as the ticking of the clock on the wall. She washes her hands next. They need it.

For that matter—she goes to the bathroom and flips on the light. Her own eyes blink back like two dead things, and there’s blood in her hair. She takes a shower.

When she’s done, it’s getting light outside the windows. Someone will come for her soon. Dorcas is confident she knows who it will be, confident and calm the same way she’s been for the past several hours, the way she can’t remember feeling for weeks. She was calm when she pushed the door open with her wand in her hand, the strength of the wood, calm when she sent the first curse and the last, calm when she heard the sound of screams coming from their mouths and hers and somewhere deep inside and—well, there’s nothing to do now but wait.

She sits on the edge of the bed with her fingers splayed across the covers—there’s dust, and she likes the feeling of the slight grittiness under her nails. She waves her wand to draw the curtains closed. Too bright, too soon. Of course, the last choice she had, she's just made, and the consequence is coming as inexorably as the sunrise. Faintly, she wonders if she should be scared.

Strange, that she isn't. Strange, too, that it's not painful to sit here—she’s avoided the bedroom for almost a month now, sleeping on the sofa, either in the house or with Lupin and Black, who don't ask questions. But now there's only a curious emptiness. A quiet. She waits.

There are more things that are strange, and they rise unbidden to the surface of her thoughts. The way Black spoke to Lupin last time she was there. The distance in his eyes, which she never for an instant saw in Marlene's. The way Marlene always insisted that hot chocolate was a summer drink. The way—and she considers stopping, finding something else to do before she thinks it, but here it is like a rising tide—the way Marlene's skin had gone pale and cool, the expression on her face when they found her, the tilt of her lips that was almost a smile.

She cried out when they told her. It was Dumbledore, and midnight. Dorcas knew, even before she heard his knock on the door. It had been hours since Marlene had been very late, and it had never felt like this anyways—so he told her, and she made some kind of noise like scraping metal, and told him to go. And he did. And she walked through the house and listened to her breathing, learned the way the sounds settled when there was no one else for her to move against.

That she doesn't cry out, thinking of it now, strikes Dorcas in a far-removed fashion as the strangest of them all. In the dark she tries to dredge up some kind of response, but nothing comes, and she feels blind with it, seeking and wanting and never, ever finding. The empty space yawns wide.

From the other room, she hears the click of the lock. Footsteps on the floor, the whisper of robes. The slither of a snake. They said he had one; she hadn't believed it.

The door opens behind her. On the wall she's facing, his shadow is clear against the light of morning come at last. Dorcas smiles, and turns to face the dawn.


End file.
